AOL Relaunches Truveo: YouTube Video Search Killer

AOL's new Truveo has intelligently aimed at an area in which Google's YouTube, ironically, has always been weak: video search. Instead of jumping into the overflowing pool of YouTube wannabes (the vast majority of which won't be), the company has focused on helping users find videos, not "broadcast themselves." YouTube has improved its video search of late, but Truveo's is better.

Unfortunately, Truveo will face the same problem confronting the dozens of "next gen" search engines that want to leapfrog Google in standard search: It doesn't matter if you're better. Searching is about habit, not quality, and if Google is paying attention, it should be able to match Truveo stride for stride. Still, YouTube's search has sucked for a while, so maybe Google isn't paying attention. In any case, points for trying. More from Variety. Release after jump.

Truveo.com
Gives Consumers a Comprehensive, Easy and Convenient One-Stop Site for Finding
Professional and User-Generated Videos

San
Francisco, CA - August
16, 2007
-AOL
today announced that it has launched a new version of Truveo.com, a one-stop
destination where consumers can find a wide range of video from across the Web -
from user-generated video clips, to professionally produced video from leading
media brands. Rebuilt from the
ground up, the new site is based on the highly acclaimed Truveo™ video search
technology that AOL
acquired in 2006. The new
Truveo.com is available beginning today at http://www.truveo.com.

“Over
the past year, there has been an explosion in the amount of professionally
produced video that’s available on the Web,” said Timothy Tuttle,
CEO
and Co-Founder of Truveo and Senior Vice President of
AOL
Video. “While today’s popular video
sharing sites offer a wide variety of user-generated video, they rarely give
users the opportunity to find professional, mainstream video. The new Truveo.com solves this problem,
so whether it’s a dog riding a skateboard or the latest episode of The Daily Show, Truveo.com is the
one-stop site for finding videos from across the Web.”

According
to a recent study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 57% of adult
Internet users say they watch or download video content online and 74% of
broadband users download or watch online video. This study also showed the popularity
and preference for professional video. According to Pew, 62% of online video viewers say that their favorite
videos are those that are “professionally produced.”*

The
new Truveo.com enables users to easily search and browse through tens of
millions of videos from thousands of sources across the Web. For users with a specific video in mind,
Truveo’s advanced video-specific algorithms help users quickly search and find
exactly the video they want. Additionally, Truveo’s search results are organized by category and by
source so that users can quickly choose the video they want from the large
number of videos that may match their query.

In
addition to powerful search capabilities, Truveo.com also provides a
browse-and-discover experience. Users can browse video by a particular category
-- such as news, sports, music and movies -- and find video available both for
free and for sale. Users can also
survey the Web’s most popular videos as well as peruse popular TV shows, popular
video sites (called channels), and favorite videos selected by other
users.

In light
of the growing copyright concerns surrounding popular video sharing websites,
the new Truveo.com was designed specifically to enable users to find and watch
video in a manner that will appeal to both content owners as well as end
users. For many of the videos from leading media brands, users will be
directed to the content owner’s original website to view the video. This
approach ensures that videos found on Truveo can be viewed in the highest
quality with the experience intended by the original content
owner.

Truveo
is the search engine for video. Truveo was founded in 2004 by some of the
industry’s leading experts in video search technology. Over the past three
years, Truveo has built one of the largest and most up-to-date indexes of
high-quality video on the Web. As a result, Truveo enables users to find
video that cannot be found in any other search engine. Truveo first
launched its industry-leading search engine in the fall of 2005 and today, the
Truveo search engine powers some of the most popular video destinations on the
Web, reaching an audience of over 40 million users each month. For more
information on Truveo, visit http://www.truveo.com.

About
AOL

AOL® is a global Web
services company that operates some of the most popular Web destinations, offers
a comprehensive suite of free software and services, runs one of the country's
largest Internet access businesses, and provides a full set of advertising
solutions. A majority-owned subsidiary of Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX),
AOL LLC is based in
Dulles,
Virginia.
AOL and its subsidiaries
also have operations in Europe,
Canada and
Asia. Learn more at
AOL.com.